What is going on here? The normally docile Apple masses are growing restless. The much anticipated iOS 6 jailbreak, evasi0n, has now been installed more than 7 million times in the six days since its release. (Forbes' Andy Greenberg pegged it at "nearly 7 million" as of 8 am Friday. At that rate, it could be well over 10 million by now, but there has been no reliable report on installs since Greenberg's.)

This is an impressive number, but it is important to remember that there are now nearly 300 million devices running iOS 6 (representing 60% of all iOS device ever, according to MacRumors.) And part of the surge can be explained by the fact that this one had a set, and well publicized, release date. Previous jailbreaks have grown gradually through word of mouth and discovery. Then there's the fact that this one took longer to crack, creating pent up demand. And, of course, there are far more iOS devices now then when the iOS 5 jailbreaks came out.

But at currently above 2% of the installed base already, something clearly is happening. Jay Freeman, aka Saurik, the founder of Cydia, the app store for jailbroken iOS devices, said in a 2011 interview that the share has historically been around 10%. Will this latest jailbreak push that number significantly higher?

If you watch that 2011 interview between Freeman and Robert Scoble, you get the sense that the impetus behind jailbreaking is much more playful and inquisitive than in any way criminal. It is really just the geek reaction to the limitations of a piece of technology. Where the average user picks up their new iPhone they want to play a game or make a FaceTime call, the geek immediately wants to know what settings they can customize. It is like the way an artist is particular about their tools, or, like Marcel Duchamp's use of a broken window (above), sees possibilites that others don't.

Are we becoming more the masters of our own destinies? Has a critical mass of users accepted jailbreaking as a matter of course? Have some of the inhibitions against jalibreaking and unlocking phones relaxed, even as the laws have tightened?

One factor that may be lubricating the trend is that there is now a company offering third-party warranties virtually identical to Apple Care Plus, for jailbroken iOS devices. There is no place on the SquareTrade website that says this explicitly, but the company's VP of Strategy Vince Tseng told GigaOm's Erica Ogg that "it makes no difference to SquareTrade what users do with the software.… if a device hasn’t been played around with on the inside we don’t have a problem with that.” (You do need to sign up with Square Trade within 30 days of purchase, just like Apple Care. So, if you think you might want to jailbreak, best to choose SquareTrade up front.) The company apparently changed its policy (quietly) in May, and I can't help thinking that this has removed one of the major pain points for users about jailbreaking.

Most important of all, what are Apple's users telling it by jailbreaking their phones? What can Apple learn—and is it listening?

Less Satisfied

It is well documented that iOS 6 reversed the previous trend of each version of iOS leading to greater satisfaction than the previous. A widely reported poll by OnDevice research showed iOS 6 dipping below iOS 5. Even though the new OS incorporates some features previously available only through jailbreaking, users clearly want more. For an idea of what they want, Gizmag put together a list of essential Cydia apps to show the range of what is available on a jailbroken iPhone.

Think Different

Part of the problem for Apple (in general, a good problem to have) is that it has gone from being a platform for non-conformists to one for conformists. Want to really be out there? Get a Windows Phone! In many ways, Apple probably still thinks of itself as a rebel, an outlier, but in reality it is now more a maker of rules than a breaker of them. In the fast-moving world of consumer electronics, this can be a liability. The jailbreakers represent the non-conformist minority within Apple's user base, and, as such, a vital part of its future.

Got Root?

"The right to have root on your machine is the right to store things which operate on your behalf," Tim Berners-Lee told the audience at a Linux conference in Australia last month. Without that right, the creator of the world wide web contends, users are subject to agendas they can neither control or, in many cases, even be aware of. He acknowledges the need to devise better security protocols to make sure that users with such access do not inadvertantly instal malicious code, but it is clear that he sees this as a smaller threat than that of the ubiquitous opacity. Linux is the language of Android, so clearly his remarks were addressed to Apple. Why couldn't root access be an expert setting for iOS? Only the geeks will use it anyway.

Multitasking

It's ridiculous, especially on an iPad, to not be able to not be able to flip easily back and forth between apps. The act of copying something in Safari and pasting it somewhere else is a routine task that is quite cumbersome in iOS. Can't this be solved without a jailbreak?

File Access

Similarly, the fact of not being able to deal directly with the file directory in iOS is maddening. This design decision is supposed to make things easier for users, but only if they want to follow the conventions Apple has set up for how to do things. Again, shouldn't expert users be able to configure their file system if they want to?

I realize this is a sore point for Apple, but even if you install the excellent Google Maps for iOS, you will still find yourself in Apple Maps if you open a link from any of the other built-in apps like Mail, Calendar and Safari. Consequently, it's really easy to inadvertently be running two battery-sucking apps simultaneously, and giving out twice as much location information! Rather than forcing users into Google's whole ecosystem, giving users a preference setting for default apps would assure that they are using Apple's apps through volition, not coercion.

Pimp Their Ride

We know that most users just stick with the defaults anyway. But for the intrepid minority that want to customize the graphic interface, why not make an SDK for themes with lots of user-controllable settings? That's a lot of what people are in fact doing with their jailbroken devices. Many would enjoy doing it directly through iOS.

It's The Developers, Stupid!

A lot of the jailbreakers are also the iOS developers that Apple is relying on to keep its App Store stocked. Driving developers to Cydia, or Android or web apps altogether, is not what Apple wants. Jailbreakers should properly be considered as Apple's avant garde (see patron saint Marcel Duchamp, above) and treated as tenders of a test bed for features to be incorporated in future versions of iOS.

Are We Getting Geekier?

Perhaps this uptick in jailbreaks indicates that users are getting more comfortable with digging in a little. Maybe we are getting a little less reverential of Apple and more interested in what we want our devices to do for us. Again, I think this makes jailbreakers valuable customers. Maybe moving the OS forward faster is more important than a unified experience for everyone.

One of the lessons of the multi-device world is that delivering the identical experience to all users is a fool's mission. The most important thing is delivering the best experience in each context. Apple's takeaway from this should be that it does not have to provide a uniformly excellent experience for all users, just an excellent one. And as the proliferation of devices has forced developers to think about the flexibility of the user experience, so too should this jailbreak epidemic get Apple thinking about how to please its full range of users, even the rebellious ones.

I am a designer and developer and content strategist. I use my experience as a magazine art director and web editor to help publishers, marketers, non-profits and self-branded individuals tell their stories in words and images. I follow all of the technologies that relate to...